Family Pride eBook

Miss Betsy Barlow, too, the deacon’s maiden
sister, was a character in her way, and was surely
not one of those vain, frivolous females to whom the
Apostle Paul had reference when he condemned the plaiting
of hair and the wearing of gold and jewels. Quaint,
queer and simple-hearted, she had but little idea
of any world this side of heaven, except the one bounded
by the “huckleberry” hills and the crystal
waters of Fairy Pond, which from the back door of
the farmhouse were plainly seen, both in the summer
sunshine and when the intervening fields were covered
with the winter snow.

The home of such a trio was, like themselves, ancient
and unpretentious, nearly one hundred years having
elapsed since the solid foundation was laid to a portion
of the building. Unquestionably, it was the oldest
house in Silverton, for on the heavy, oaken door of
what was called the back room was still to be seen
the mark of a bullet, left there by some marauders
who, during the Revolution, had encamped in that neighborhood.
George Washington, too, it was said, had once spent
a night beneath its roof, the deacon’s mother
pouring for him her Bohea tea and breaking her home-made
bread. Since that time several attempts had been
made to modernize the house. Lath and plaster
had been put upon the rafters and paper upon the walls,
wooden latches had given place to iron, while in the
parlor, where Washington had slept, there was the extravagance
of a knob, a genuine porcelain knob, such, as Uncle
Ephraim said, was only fit for the gentry who could
afford to be grand. For himself, he was content
to live as his father did; but young folks, he supposed,
must in some things have their way, and so when his
pretty niece, who had lived with him from childhood
to the day of her marriage, came back to him a widow,
bringing her two fatherless children and a host of
new ideas, he good-humoredly suffered her to tear
down some of his household idols and replace them
with her own. And thus it was that the farmhouse
gradually changed its appearance both outwardly and
in, for young womanhood which had but one glimpse
of the outer world will not settle down quietly amid
fashions a century old. And Lucy Lennox, when
she returned to the farmhouse, was not quite the same
as when she went away. Indeed, Aunt Betsy in
her guileless heart feared that she had actually fallen
from grace, imputing the fall wholly to Lucy’s
predilection for a certain little book on whose back
was written “Common Prayer,” and at which
Aunt Betsy scarcely dared to look, lest she should
be guilty of the enormities practiced by the Romanists
themselves. Clearer headed than his sister, the
deacon read the black-bound book, finding therein
much that was good, but wondering why, when folks promised
to renounce the pomps and vanities, they did not do
so, instead of acting more stuck up than ever.
Inconsistency was the underlying strata of the whole
Episcopal Church, he said, and as Lucy, without taking
any public step, had still declared her preference